Questions & Answers
- What can I expect out of coaching?
- Will coaching teach me new skills?
- Who would benefit from Your Breast Cancer Coach?
- What can I look forward to?
- Will coaching help me with interruptions in my career?
- What about my role as a wife and mother?
- Is coaching a form of psychotherapy?
- What is the structure for participation in breast cancer coaching?
- How do I choose a breast cancer coach?
What can I expect out of coaching?
As Your Breast Cancer Coach, I will provide a confidential, nonjudgmental, and safe environment. You aren't able to change the fact of your breast cancer, but you can improve the quality of your life by understanding how you react to your diagnosis. Coaching helps you comprehend and work with the impact of breast cancer on your daily life. In our work together, we collaborate to regain your sense of stability and to re-establish your self-confidence. Focused in the present, coaching is a "can do" approach to help you restore some control over your environment. You will learn to take more control of challenging health, personal, and professional demands by learning to take "adaptive" actions. Coaching is about moving forward, and is action oriented. As coaching progresses, you will experience a difference in how you feel, think and behave. Your general level of motivation will be enhanced as you increasingly believe in your own capacities and capabilities. Emerging from our work together, we will focus on the vision of your future that you wish to reach.
Will coaching teach me new skills?
Yes, it is my job to help you create new strategies to solve problems and reach goals. In order to do this, each phone session will begin with you choosing the focus of our work. As we study these challenges, you will find yourself developing new and adaptive skills to approach even the toughest problems. I will also give you homework tasks so you can practice the new skills we discover. I will gently and routinely challenge your thinking to include more choices than you may be considering. In addition, an important part of my job is to help you strengthen the skills that you already have. Through our partnership in the breast cancer experience, you will feel empowered to move forward. You can do it!
Who would benefit from Your Breast Cancer Coach?
Your Breast Cancer Coach is useful for women diagnosed for the first time, for women with recurrence, and for women with metastasis. This work may particularly benefit women who have enormous career demands, and feel that they can't take time away from their work responsibilities. Scheduling is flexible and can work around your professional and personal demands. One of the luxuries of this service is that we can work anywhere that you feel comfortable from behind closed doors at your office to the privacy of your own home. This is a great convenience for you! I will do all that I can to make our time together scheduled to meet your needs.
What can I look forward to?
As hard as it is to believe, there is an upside! My vision of you is that you are not broken by breast cancer! You will learn to trust yourself more. Our partnership will illuminate the great strength and potential that you have for your life. Breast cancer amplifies significant issues. Out of the trauma and difficulty emerges the clarity of what you truly value and strive to achieve. As Your Breast Cancer Coach, I will help you to clarify those values and goals.
Will coaching help me with interruptions in my career?
Women in the midst of accomplishing have no time for breast cancer. We're working hard, loving hard, parenting hard, and playing hard. We'll explore tools and strategies to maintain as much as possible of your normal routine. I will help you to keep on track.
What about my role as a wife and mother?
You may feel that the effects of treatment interfere with your role as a mom, and partner. Together, we'll examine areas of impact, and find ways to solve many of these problems. Most hurdles are temporary, but the shifts in role can feel devastating. We'll tailor-make strategies for your home, and your relationships.
Is coaching a form of psychotherapy?
No. Unlike psychotherapy, coaching does not focus on the past to understand your current feelings and behavior. It does not use the medical model to create a diagnosis, nor does it intentionally seek emotional healing from old wounds. Coaching is a process that begins with the here and now, and helps you initiate action toward goals. Additionally, the coaching relationship is an equal and collaborative partnership. In psychotherapy, the work happens in the therapist's office. Coaching happens primarily over the telephone and unless you are in my local area, we do not meet in person. Coaching is a very different tool from psychotherapy. For many women coaching alone will help them through this experience. Sometimes in the process of coaching it becomes clear that psychotherapy would be of benefit. In these instances I will encourage you to seek additional or other professional care. It is possible to do both concurrently, however there are times when one intervention is preferable to another. Whatever you choose, coaching is not meant to be a replacement for psychotherapy when therapy is indicated. I will be happy to help you to find the optimal psychological services and resources in your area.
What is the structure for participation in breast cancer coaching?
Typically we will meet weekly by telephone for 30 or 45 minutes. It is optimal to attempt to commit to three months of breast cancer coaching to receive the many benefits. Send your email to breastcancercoaching.com and we will find a schedule that is most convenient for you.
How do I choose a breast cancer coach?
It is important that you have informed choice when evaluating a breast cancer coach. Just like a second opinion for medical treatment, it is important to evaluate other coaches to give yourself the opportunity to choose the right person for you.